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Part of the credit goes to the name itself.

Scranton. Or, as so many pronounce it, Scran'un.

It's kind of a funny word to say. But how funny would it be as the backdrop of a major network television series?

Locals wondered about that back in 2004 when word broke that the NBC adaptation of the cult British series "The Office" would be set in Scranton, of all places.

God knows this worried a lot of folks, given Scranton's reputation as a TV punching bag. On "All in the Family," Archie Bunker dreaded having to go there to visit wife Edith's relatives. On "The Sopranos," a mobster contemptuously referred to Boston as "Scranton with clams." On "Friends," Ross Geller lamented that his beloved pet monkey, Marcel, was turned down by every zoo he contacted, including the Scranton one, so pathetic it even had dogs on display.

Nearly a decade later, it's safe to say that Scranton fared quite well during its extended moment in the spotlight. "The Office" turned out to be among the finest sitcoms in television history, along the way providing the city with a steady supply of residual pop culture cachet.

The series shuts down for good on Thursday, May 16, but not before its cast and crew get the chance to interact with their fans one final time in Scranton during Saturday's "The Office" Wrap Party. As we get ready for the big bash, let's take a look back at the "Office"-Scranton dynamic over the years.

In the beginning

On the afternoon of Feb. 4, 2004, a fax came into the Times-Tribune newsroom from the Los Angeles production office for something called "The Office: An American Workplace." The producers wanted permission to shoot an exterior view of the Scranton Times Building.

After a few phone calls, we found out that NBC had decided to adapt the acclaimed British comedy "The Office," a painfully funny mock documentary about life at Wern-ham Hogg Paper Merchants. The show's co-creator, Ricky Gervais, played the company's branch manager, David Brent, an incompetent, often cruel buffoon who fancied himself an entertainer.

The network planned to shoot a pilot, i.e. the debut episode of a TV series. Whether the pilot actually got picked up remained up in the air.

Turns out, NBC officials liked what they saw, and that fall the network green-lighted the show for a six-episode run in the spring of 2005. In November, the show's executive producer, Greg Daniels, answered the big question posed to him: Why Scranton?

For one thing, he wanted the show set in an industrial area, just like the English city of Slough, the setting of the British version. And it would have to be within a couple hours' drive of New York City, home to the corporate office of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Co., Mr. Daniels' name for the American equivalent of Wernham Hogg.

But the reason Scranton ended up beating out other midsized Northeast cities like Utica, N.Y., was that, as a child, Mr. Daniels received Valentine's Day cards that had the words "Made in Scranton" on the back of them. Those cards were produced at Scranton's Paper Magic Group.

On top of that, Mr. Daniels simply thought Scranton was "a great name."

"It sounds good," he said then.

Growing pains

The pilot episode of "The Office" aired March 24, 2005. For the most part, it was a faithful recreation of the British version's debut, from the ever-present documentary crew to the long, awkward pauses to the plot itself.

Viewers were introduced to the American David Brent, Michael Scott, the clueless and insensitive manager of Dunder Mifflin's Scranton branch. Steve Carell, a veteran comedic performer best known for his work on "The Daily Show," portrayed him.

Rounding out the main cast: Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute, an insanely intense salesman and the self-proclaimed "assistant to the regional manager"; and John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer as office buddies Jim, a smart but somewhat aimless salesman who lives for pranking Dwight, and Pam, the office's sweet but frustrated receptionist who's engaged to doltish warehouse worker Roy (David Denham).

The show took it pretty easy on Scranton itself in these initial episodes, aside from subtly poking fun at the provincial ways of a struggling city, which really could have been any number of American towns. Where Mr. Daniels and the show's other writers nodded to Scranton was in making references to real local places, among them the now-closed Farley's Eatery & Pub in downtown Scranton and the former Bishop O'Hara High School in Dunmore, where several of the characters attended high school.

And, of course, there were the opening credit shots of downtown Scranton, shot by Mr. Krasinski during a visit he made here not long after being cast on the show.

The first season provided some great moments, particularly during the episode "Diversity Day," in which a diversity training seminar goes horribly awry when wannabe comedian Michael turns it into a feast of racial insensitivity. However, the ratings were low, and critics complained that Michael was too unlikable a main character.

It looked like the show might be canceled, but it had a champion in NBC's then-entertainment president, Kevin Reilly, who made sure it was renewed for a second season.

The Breakthrough

"The Office" returned in September of 2005 with a welcome bit of publicity, thanks to Mr. Carell's outside endeavors. Late that summer, "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," the film Mr. Carell starred in and co-wrote with director Judd Apatow, became a surprise box office smash.

The movie's huge popularity no doubt brought more viewers to the show, which progressively found its own distinctive comedic voice separate from the British version. One inspired episode followed another, including "The Dundies," "Office Olympics" and "The Injury," in which Michael burns his foot on a George Foreman grill he had set up in his bedroom for convenient breakfast cooking. You have to see it to truly appreciate its genius.

The Scranton references picked up considerably, too, be it Dwight calling Rock 107 in hopes of winning a Jethro Tull box set, or the episode "Booze Cruise," in which Michael causes havoc aboard a party cruise on Lake Wallenpaupack.

Before long, local businesses began lobbying to have their products seen on the show, to the point where the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce started hosting yearly "prop drops" to accommodate the demand.

As the second season progressed, Michael became a much more sympathetic character, his rough edges smoothed out by the fact that he was at heart a decent guy whose problems stemmed in large part from his all-consuming desire to be liked.

Meanwhile, Dwight's distinctive combination of menace and gullibility put him on his way to becoming one of the more unique creations in the history of television comedy. And the writers fully fleshed out the huge cast of supporting characters, from slow-witted accountant Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) to boy-crazy customer service representative Kelly (Mindy Kaling) to scheming oddball quality assurance director Creed (Creed Bratton).

Of course, for many viewers, the show's biggest draw was the growing flirtation between Jim and Pam. At the end of the season's final episode, "Casino Night," they shared their first kiss.

The milestone season culminated on Aug. 27, 2006, when "The Office" received the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. There was no denying now that the show would have a long and prosperous future as one of the torchbearers of NBC's primetime lineup.

To Stamford and back

Season 3 picked up a few months after the big Jim and Pam kiss. Pam had broken off her engagement to Roy, but Jim had transferred to Dunder Mifflin's Stamford, Conn., office. There, he meets a new love interest, the personable and pretty Karen Filippelli (Rashida Jones) and a new annoying desk mate, a goofy, a capella-loving, anger-prone blueblood named Andy Bernard (Ed Helms), who takes a special glee in calling Jim "Big Tuna."

However, not long after Jim settles into his new digs, Dunder Mifflin's corporate office shuts down the Stamford branch, and Jim, Karen and Andy get transferred to Scranton. A few other poor souls join them, but Michael promptly scares them away, although not before he and Dwight regale them with their video, "Lazy Scranton," with its shout-outs to the Electric City, Montage Mountain and the Anthracite Heritage Museum.

The first-rate episodes continued, among them "A Benihana Christmas," in which Michael begins dating his crazed former boss, Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin).

And, in December '06, "The Office" finally came to Scranton, in the form of Rainn Wilson, the first cast member to visit the city since the show's start. The actor spent several hours at the Mall at Steamtown signing autographs and cracking wise with thousands of fans, who formed a line that snaked out of the mall and down Lackawanna Avenue. (Two years later, the mall became the site for The Dunder Mifflin Store, a kiosk run by NBC-Universal that sold "Office" merchandise, including the wildly popular Dwight Schrute bobblehead.)

Then, in late March of 2007, Scranton ventured to "The Office" when this reporter and Times-Tribune staff photographer Jason Farmer spent a day on the show's L.A. set, which had the look and feel of an actual office park.

We were given a front row seat to the last day of filming of "The Job," the final episode of the third season. Among the highlights - getting to watch Mr. Wilson struggle and improvise his way through one of the show's patented "talking head" scenes. He did at least 20 takes, and they were all entertaining.

One scene we weren't allowed to watch that day - the episode's kicker scene, in which weasely office temp Ryan Howard (B.J. Novak) learns he's gotten the big promotion to corporate. That episode also featured a big cliffhanger - Jim asking the newly single Pam on a date.

Ain't No Party Like a Scranton Party

Of course, Pam said yes, and the soul mates were a couple at the start of Season 4. That season was interrupted and shortened due to a strike by the Writers Guild of America, yet still featured a number of exemplary episodes, particularly "Fun Run," "Dinner Party" and "Night Out."

Just before the start of the strike, on Oct. 26-28, 2007, Scranton rolled out the red carpet when it hosted "The Office" Convention. For three days, tens of thousands of "Office" fans interacted with more than a dozen cast and crew members - Mr. Carell, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Krasinski and Ms. Fischer were no-shows - via panel discussions, autograph sessions and even impromptu late-night musical performances, as when Ed Helms showed off his banjo-playing skills at downtown Scranton's The Bog. The bar has become the unofficial watering hole for "Office" cast members, and was mentioned earlier this season on the show.

While the convention marked a seminal moment in "The Office's" history, it was far from the last one. In February 2009, the series scored the coveted post-Super Bowl time slot, and reached its highest audience ever, with over 20 million viewers tuning in.

Then, in the fall of 2009, millions watched in delight as Jim and Pam, or "Jam," as they had come to be known, were married at Niagara Falls. A few months later, Pam gave birth to the couple's first child, Cecelia, or CeCe for short.

For Michael, love proved a little more elusive. Following his toxic relationship with Jan, he fell hard for Holly Flax (Amy Ryan), the human resources representative who took the place of sad sack Toby Flenderson (Paul Lieberstein) during his brief stay in Costa Rica. Their budding romance got cut short, though, when Holly gets sent to the Nashua, N.H., branch after Dunder Mifflin CFO David Wallace (Andy Buckley) catches her and Michael kissing.

In 2010, Steve Carell threw out a bombshell by announcing that "The Office's" seventh season would be his last. Midway through the season, Holly returned to Dunder Mifflin Scranton, which by now was under the control of Florida-based Sabre and its mercurial owner, Jo Bennett (Kathy Bates).

Holly and Michael's renewed romance allowed the writers to show Michael grow into a more emotionally mature adult. The couple got engaged, and in the April 28, 2011, episode, "Goodbye, Michael," fans watched Michael leave Dunder Mifflin for the last time and head for his new life in Colorado with Holly.

Mr. Carell's departure left a huge void, but the show went on with replacements for Michael, first with Will Ferrell as the ill-fated Deangelo Vickers, then James Spader as the uber-creepy, sex-obsessed Robert California. Both were game for the task, but for a lot of fans, a Dunder Mifflin without Michael Scott was a world they no longer had much interest in.

Last August, Mr. Daniels announced the show would come to a close at the end of its ninth season. And it's been a good one, with Mr. Daniels and his writers coming up with a number of interesting plot lines, chief among them the long-awaited airing of the PBS documentary about Dunder Mifflin Scranton, and the surprising instability in Jim and Pam's marriage caused by Jim starting a sports marketing company with friends in Philadelphia.

Based on last week's episode, it appears the Halperts' marriage is safe, but whether they stay in Scranton remains to be seen. Either way, Scranton and its people benefited from having them and the rest of the "Office" crew on the clock for as long as they did.

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